Some New Work

The past few weeks have been productive for me.  I am working on recording online courses, and finished up a few gourds, as well as some "non-gourd" artworks that I will share in another post.

The first was more of an opportunity for me to try out new carving burs that I received at Christmas, as well as trying out a weaving technique that has long intrigued me but I never gave it a go.  At left see a photo of my testing my new cup carving burs on an old gourd piece. 

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And here is the finished gourd basket.  I wanted to use an underwater theme and oh here are the selkies/seals again!  These turn up a lot in my work, I just love them.  As you can see above, these burs really burn the gourd a bit, so I had no choice but to paint over it.  For the basket part, I used Marianne Barnes' undulating basket weave technique.  You can find directions on how to do that outlined in her book, Weaving on Gourds.

The next gourd is made from a good sized basketball gourd.  I fashioned a little gourd ring stand which is attached and the seam covered with a thin strip of black leather.  The magnolias are burned and colored with pencils.  

The one below is a William Morris design with a chickadee.  I used pyrography and again with colored pencils to add subtle colors.  The border is done with metallic copper acrylic paint.

This last one is a little bucolic scene of an English countryside with grazing sheep.  This is a small, lidded bowl and the inside is finished with black flocking.  The lid is burned with the shading pen and yes we have the colored pencils again for a little color enhancement.  

That's all for now!  My next post will be a mish-mosh of some different things so if that interests you be sure to visit again!